Playing Make-Believe with James Bond 007: Blood Stone

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An interview with Bizarre Creations' Peter Collier about translating the big ideas into minute-to-minute gameplay.

By Michael Thomsen

Bond games have been a microcosm for the strengths and weaknesses of videogames. The concept of the seductive and crafty spy is perfectly suited to the language of interaction. Stealth, spectacle, exotic locations and punny one-liners have all become well-defined tropes in gaming. For all that promise, translating those game ideas into actual mechanics has been a great challenge, with a long history of games that could reasonably be described as under performers. Bizarre Creations' James Bond 007: Blood Stone aims to not outrun that past precedent but prove that, in the absence of the failed movie that was supposed to accompany Blood Stone, games can be a rich enough entertainment by themselves. At New York Comic Con I spoke to Peter Collier, a level designer at Bizarre (with a fine game design blog of his own), about the challenges of translating great ideas into minute-to-minute gameplay.

IGN: One of the most impressive things about Blood Stone is the way it switches from shooting to melee, to boat racing, to car driving. How did that affect development? Did you have different designers making different sequences, or did everyone work on everything?

Peter Collier: We had different level designers working on different parts. We had one level designer that specifically did the driving levels and worked closely with one of the gameplay programmers to deliver on those levels. We found it was better to specialize on a particular area individually to get the best results. I tended to focus on a lot of the combat encounters and other level designers focused on the stealthier levels. We found that was the best way to approach things.

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IGN: What issues affect level design when you've got to accommodate both cover shooting and an up-close melee system?

Peter Collier: It's interesting, the takedown system we've got—we feel it adds an extra layer of strategy to cover combat. Before all you could do was stay behind cover, shoot, and move on to the next piece of cover. When we design the layout of cover we've got this risk-reward thing—is it worth the risk to sprint over there to take out that guy and then use the focus mode to take out the next one in the open? With that extra layer of strategy involved it means extra design elements need to go into it in the way you lay out cover and the spacing between cover. That's on top of the regular things you need to do with level design like branching options to suit different player styles. Giving players stealthier routes if they're inclined to that kind of play, as well as supporting all-out guns blazing routes.

IGN: It seems a lot of the areas you're showing here are more confined. There are a lot of narrow corridors and medium sized rooms with lots of cover that kind of push you towards using the takedowns much more frequently.

Peter Collier: There are a few larger shootouts in larger areas, but yeah you're right. We wanted the player to have a cinematic experience. The narrative's important; we wanted to push the player through the narrative. We don't want it to be particularly long and drawn out. Bond's not about that. It's a very high action franchise, what they do in the films and stuff. It has got an element of linearity to it, but for us the experience is king above anything else. It's not an overly technical game. You're not going to be punching in lots of buttons to do combos and takedowns. It's a very simple takedown system, it's more about how and when you use it.

What would James Bond do?

IGN: That leads into another question I want to ask. It seems like Bond can take a lot of damage here. I just saw someone in a room with three or four enemies just pop out of cover and bull rush all of them, he get shot a lot and without any big penalty. Did you play around with the damage levels during development to see how that would affect the way players would want to use different tactics in different situations?

Peter Collier: We experimented with a lot of that stuff, made a few mistakes, learned from those mistakes, and came to this conclusion. The thing is the Bond audience is very broad, you're not just catering to hardcore gamers. On the lower difficulty setting, like right now we're showing everything on Recruit, which is the easiest setting. That does mean you can absorb a lot of damage, so that makes it easier to cover large distances to take enemies down. The later difficulty settings, especially the 007 difficulty, is really punishing. You really have to be careful anytime you run towards enemies, you have to make sure you use the smart phone to get the layout of patrol routes and things like that. We've had to really think about accessibility to the audience. Experience is king for us. If the player feels like Bond, then that's really, really good for us. Of course you've got to make sure there's a challenge to the gameplay. We hope we've charted that side very well.

IGN: Are you worried about the cursed nature of the IP? Since the original GoldenEye no one's really had much creative success with the Bond license. Even the games that have sold decently have sort of evaporated culturally without any lasting impact.

Peter Collier: They've got a very patchy history, the Bond games. I think the Bond games that have been successful have demonstrated the authenticity of the Bond experience that fans want. Everything or Nothing, for example, that gave a variety to players and I think fans appreciated that. GoldenEye was just a very solid experience in terms of delivering an authentic Bond feel. Other games maybe haven't delivered on that authenticity. Perhaps there's been too much shooting or things like that. That's one of those things we've done with Blood Stone. We've really designed it in a way that really encourages players to play in a very physical way, to step out of cover—to not play the whole game in terms of going from cover to cover to cover to cover. That's why we have this extra layer of melee.

IGN: Did you think about using the GoldenEye concept of adding new objectives to levels on higher difficulties, so that the better you got at the game the more of the environment you're able to explore?

Peter Collier: It was definitely a consideration. We looked at all the Bond games and what they offered, but really the main inspiration for us was looking at the recent Bond films and looking at what it is that makes it Daniel Craig's. The conclusion we came to is a more cinematic experience, there's not really that element of unlocking different skills or anything. You're Daniel Craig right from the start. While you're missing out on that progressive element, maybe that detracts from the feeling of being Bond if you start at the beginning of the game and are in any way limited.

IGN: Are you nervous about releasing the game independently without any big movie behind it?

Peter Collier: No, not really. Obviously as a Bond fan I want there to be more Bond films. But it's given us an opportunity to stand out as an entertainment medium. Perhaps games can start to become more of an equal partner to film in entertainment franchises.